Employees pay mental health costs for big business deals

Employees pay mental health costs for big business deals

One of my good friends has gone through two rounds of company restructuring in five years. He’s a producer in the media industry, and the first happened when his freewheeling, anarchic company was swallowed by a comparatively more corporate broadcaster. A culture clash ensued, and a big round of layoffs. My friend worried he’d lose his job. He’d recount stories about the social withdrawal and depression he saw, and the people around him who took days off for “stress leave.” Meanwhile, he kept his head down and postponed any time off — he figured, the harder he worked, the harder he would be to fire.

Then, there’s a patient I saw recently. He’s a financial industry executive whose company merged with an investment firm. The investment firm featured executives who were high-octane. Porsche equivalents. They were Type-A guys who really hustled. His company moved a little more slowly, and amid the stress of the restructuring that followed, my patient responded to the stress by spending more late nights at work. He drank more, stopped exercising and slept less — classic symptoms of being stressed out.

I thought about these men recently as I read over two new articles about the health effects of mergers and acquisitions — a relevant topic amid our current period of economic uncertainty. The first study is a Canadian one led by researchers from the University of Calgary and published in January in Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

To conduct it, researchers followed 3,280 randomly selected employees for one year, assessing them along the way for job exposure to mergers and acquisitions as well as mental health disorders. Surprise, surprise: The employees who endured mergers or acquisitions had a much higher incidence of generalized anxiety disorder compared to those who did not — 6.7% of the M&A group had anxiety, compared to only 2.4% of the group that did not experience a merger or acquisition.

The Dutch researchers used an enormous survey called the Netherlands Working Conditions Cohort Study, about 9,076 of which satisfied the in-depth survey requirements. Conducted beginning November 2007, the survey focused on employees who had experienced a corporate takeover, or significant downsizing. The survey also asked employees to rate their own health on a five-point scale from excellent to poor. Respondents also were assessed with a tool called the Utrecht Burnout Scale, which analyzes employee response to statements such as, “I feel tired when I wake up in the morning and I am confronted with my job.”

Once again, it will be no surprise to anyone who has survived a restructuring that the study concluded: “Prolonged exposure to enterprise restructuring increased the likelihood of poor general health …” Also: “Emotional exhaustion was more likely in employees with prolonged exposure to enterprise restructuring …”

One interesting thing? The effects were temporary; employee health stopped deteriorating once restructuring stopped. But perhaps the survey’s most valuable finding was the extent that restructuring was less damaging than restructuring’s symptom: job insecurity. In other words, it’s not the restructuring itself, but the job insecurity that’s so harmful. The researchers speculated that the cause was multifactorial. When facing job insecurity, people experienced anxiety and elevated heart rates. They smoked more, and they ate less healthily.

Both the Canadian and the Dutch researchers provided some advice to corporate titans who wish to keep their employees in the best health possible. The Canadians suggested employers begin programs that promote mental health among employees after a merger announcement.

The Dutch researchers were more specific: They believed employers should do as much as possible to minimize the duration of a restructuring. Employers should “limit the time they expose employees to job insecurity during restructuring processes,” they said, adding that employee health would benefit from “open and clear communication,” with more involvement and consultation from rank-and-file employees.

All of that sounds good to me. Occupational health professionals have long known that employee health varies proportionally to the amount of control the employee feels at work. (The stress levers are demand vs. control and effort vs. reward.) The perception during a merger or acquisition? The employee has no control. There’s a feeling of potential doom — or at least, the ongoing possibility of layoffs. Employers should attempt to limit the instability. And as I told my friend working as a media producer, it would benefit the rank-and-file employees to engage in healthy, stress-busting pursuits, such as regular exercise, hobbies and spending time with loved ones.

In a world of perpetual change, invest time and effort within your sphere of influence. Improve your health, resiliency and happiness. The long-term personal “return on investment” will outlast the economic turbulent times.

–Dr. James Aw is the medical director of the Medcan Clinic, a leading private health clinic in Toronto. For more information, visit medcan.com.